BOOKS

Books about Topaz

Arrington, Leonard J. The Price of Prejudice 2nd ed., Delta, UT: Topaz Museum, 1997. Factual account of Topaz with details of daily life, agriculture, and employment. Updated edition with photographs was reprinted by the Topaz Museum and is now online at USU Digital History Collections

Atkins, Laura and Stan Yogi. Fred Korematsu Speaks Up. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Press, 2017.Bannai, Lorraine K. Enduring Conviction: Fred Korematsu and his quest for justice. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015.

Bannai, Lorraine K. Enduring Conviction: Fred Korematsu and his quest for justice. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015

de Nevers, Klancy Clark, The Colonel and the Pacifist. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2004. Story of WWII Internment mastermind Colonel Karl Bendetsen and Perry Saito, who was interned at the Tule Lake Relocation Center. http://www.colonelandthepacifist.com/

Dempster, Brian Komei, ed. From our Side of the Fence San Francisco, CA: Kearny Street Workshop, 2001. Writing accounts by former internees, fifty years after internment.

———-. Making Home from War.: Stories of Japanese American exile and resettlement. Berkeley, CA: Heyday, 2011. Stories by people who were in Topaz and other camps.

Driesbach, Janice T. and Susan Landauer., eds. Obata’s Yosemite: The art and letters of Chiura Obata from his trip to the High Sierra in 1927. Yosemite Assoc., 1993.

Ferrin, Josh and Tres Ferrin. Blitz Kids: The Cinderella story of the 1944 University of Utah National Championship basketball team. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2012. Both Wat Misaka from Ogden, Utah and Masateru Tatsuno from San Francisco played on the U of U basketball team.

Hamamoto, Darrell Y., ed. Blossoms in the Desert. So. San Francisco, CA: Giant Horse Printing Co., 2003. Personal accounts from the 1945 class of Topaz High School.

Hibi, Hisako. Peaceful painter: memoirs of an issei woman artist Hisako Hibi. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2004. Hisako and her husband were artists who taught at the Topaz Art School.

Hill, Kimi Kodani. Topaz Moon: Art of the internment. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2000. A biography of Chiura Obata, who started the art school at Tanforan and Topaz.

Irons, Peter, ed. Justice at War: The story of the Japanese American internment cases. New York: Oxford University Press. 1983. Discusses the Fred Korematsu Supreme Court case.

Irons, Peter, ed. Justice Delayed: The record of the Japanese American internment cases. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1989. A record of the appeals of the Supreme Court test cases, including Fred Korematsu.

Kitano, Harry. Generations and Identity: The Japanese American. Needham Heights, MA: Ginn Press, 1993. Kitano was a Topaz internee and became a professor of sociology at UCLA.

Mori, Toshio. The Chauvinist and other stories. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA, 1979. Short stories written by a former Topaz internee.

———-. Unfinished Message: Selected works of Toshio Mori. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2000. More short stories.

———-. Yokohama, California. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1949, 1985. Short stories.

Okubo, Miné Citizen 13660. Seattle, WA: Univ. of Washington Press, 1946. Personal account of life in Topaz with illustrations of the camp by the author.

Otsuka, Julie. When the Emperor was Divine. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Fiction based on the author’s family experience in Topaz.

Rawitsch, Mark. The House on Lemon Street: Japanese Pioneers and the American Dream. Louisville, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2012.

Richardson, Susan B., ed. I Call to Remembrance: Toyo Suyemoto’s years of internment. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007. Before Suyemoto passed away in 2003, she wrote a memoir of her camp experiences while she and her family and infant son were in Tanforan Racetrack and, later, the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah.

Robinson, Greg and Elena Tajima Creef, eds. Miné Okubo: Following her own road. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2008. Essays about Miné Okubo illustrations by her.

Sasaki, R.A. The Loom and other stories. St. Paul, Minnesota: Greywolf Press, 1991.

Taylor, Sandra C. Jewel of the Desert: Japanese American internment at Topaz. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1993. The history of San Francisco Bay area Japanese Americans and their forced internment at Topaz, Utah.

Tunnell, Michael O. and George W. Chilcoat. The Children of Topaz. New York, NY: Holiday House, 1996. Based on a diary kept by Lillian “Anne” Yamauchi Hori’s third grade class in Topaz.

Uchida, Yoshiko. Journey to Topaz. New York, NY: Scribner, 1971. Story of an eleven year-old and her family as they are forced from their home and sent to Topaz, Utah.

Uchida, Yoshiko. Desert Exile. Seattle, WA: Univ. of Washington Press, 1989. Personal account of her family’s uprooting from Berkeley, CA. to Topaz.

General books

Burton, Jeffery F., Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, Richard W. Lord. Confinement and Ethnicity. Western Archeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, US Dept of Interior 1999. Provides an overview of the tangible remains currently left at all the sites.

Daniels, Roger. Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, rev. ed. 2004.

Dusselier, Jane E. Artifacts of Loss: Crafting survival in Japanese American concentration camps. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008.

Gesensway, Deborah and Mindy Roseman. Beyond Words: Images from America’s concentration camps. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987. Artwork from many of the camps.

Gordon, Linda and Gary Y. Okihiro, eds. Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the censored images of Japanese American internment. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006.

Harth, Erica, ed. Last Witnesses: Reflections on the wartime internment of Japanese Americans. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Hatamiya, Leslie T. Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Higa, Karen. The View from Within: Japanese American Art from the internment camps, 1942-1945. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA, 1992. History of artists in Topaz and other camps.

Hirasuna, Delphine. The Art of Gaman. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press. 2005.

Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki and  James D. Houston. Farewell to Manzanar. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973. Based on the author’s experience in Manzanar.

Inada, Lawson F. Drawing the Line. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1997. Poetry.

———-. Legends from Camp. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1992. Poetry.

Inada, Lawson F. ed. Only What We Could Carry. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2000. Compilation of varied documents including government papers, cartoons and personal narratives.

Japanese American Citizens League. Teachers Curriculum Guide A comprehensive tool to help educators teach about the internment camp experience. The contents include material for elementary through high school classes and also has a complete listing of other resources.  http://www.jacl.org

Kessler, Lauren. Stubborn Twig: Generations in the life of a Japanese American Family. Corvalis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2005.

Kitagaki, Paul Jr. Behind Barbed Wire Searching for Japanese Americans Incarcerated During World War II Chicago, IL: CityFiles Press, 2019.

Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. Boston: David R. Godine, 1981. Novel about Canadian internment.

Lim, Deborah K. The Lim Report: A research report of Japanese Americans in American concentration camps during World War II.  Kearney, NE: Morris Publishing, 2002.

Lyon, Cherstin M. Prisons and Patriots: Japanese American Wartime Citizenship, Civil Disobedience, and Historical Memory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012.

Myers, Joan and Gary Okihiro. Whispered Silences: Japanese Americans and World War II. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996. Photographs taken from all of the camps forty years after internment. Essay by Gary Okihiro.

Okada, John. No-No Boy. San Francisco: Combined Asian American Resources Project, Inc., 1976. Fictional account of an internee who answered “No-No” to the loyalty questions.

Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office, 1982. Record of Congressional hearings on internment.

Robinson, Greg. By Order of the President: FDR and the internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2001.

Stanley, Jerry. I am an American: A true story of Japanese American internment.  New York: Crown Pub., 1994. Juvenile account of the history.

Weglyn, Michi. Years of Infamy: The untold story of America’s concentration camps. New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1976. Thorough account of internment including Crystal City, Texas.

Wollenberg, Charles. Rebel Lawyer: Wayne Collins and the defense of Japanese American rights. Berkeley, CA: Heyday, 2018

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Photo: Brian Buroker

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